Brief Description: Clecoed Rudder Skin to Work Table
Instead of using sandbags to hold the rudder skins tightly against the work table, I transfer drilled and clecoed the skins to my work table. This worked fantastically, as the skin was held very tightly to the table. My work surface is MDF (not plywood), so this worked well. The RANS manuals suggest using Vice-grip pliers as a lever/handle to rotate the PVC pipe (this accomplishes the bend). Instead, I put a 90-degree PVC elbow on the end of the PVC pipe and used a short length of 1.25" PVC pipe as a lever. I did not use PVC cement on the lever, just the elbow. That way, the lever arm can be removed so that the fixture can be more easily stored (I think that I need the jig again later in the kit construction. The bending process works best with 2 people. While I held the PVC pipe firmly against the work surface, my wife rotated the lever to "roll" the pipe and accomplish the bend. Several iterations were necessary to get the bend to take. I stopped when the clecoes in the PVC pipe were just a little bit further than parallel to the work surface. The bend needs to be abou 100 degrees, so about 10 degrees past parallel with the work surface.
